I like bunq.me a lot. Thinking about the current functionality, I have some ideas for possible next steps.
Observations
- If you know somebodies bunq.me url, you can pay that person
- Bunqers can only connect their bunq.me url to a single Bunq bank account
Conclusions
- As you can pay anybody whose url you know, the url acts a bit as an alias for a Bunq bank account
- Therefore, the url slug can be seen as a bunq bank account name. So I think it should be called a Bunq name.
- As a Bunq name is essentially an alias for a bank account, it should not be set in the profile page but in account > settings > account aliases, next to email addresses and phone numbers.
- As the Bunq name, phone number and email are all aliases, the could behave in similar ways. Everywhere where you can currently use an alias, you should be able to use a Bunq name and the other way around.
Suggestions
- Allow for Bunq names in the ’recipient’ field of the payment form in the app
- Allow for phone numbers and email addresses in the Bunq.me url. Like https://bunq.nl/jasper@gmail.nl/7.50 or https://bunq.nl/+31612345678/7.50
- Make the Bunq name part of the alias list. Allow for the creation (and modification) of one Bunq name per Bunq iban or maybe even more.
- Create a big button ‘pay a bunqer’ on the Bunq homepage (Bunq.com) that links to https://bunq.me/ (without slug). This way if I want somebody to pay me, I only have to say “You know my phone number, right? Well, then just go to the Bunq homepage and press ‘pay a bunqer’” I think this would also beautifully illustrate the power of Bunq on the homepage!
- On the Bunq.me homepage, add a form where (non-bunq) users can enter the Bunq name, phone number or email address of the Bunq user they want to pay too. This will redirect them to the relevant Bunq.me page
- The previous two items can be implemented trivially already by doing a lookup for the Bunq name from the phone number or email address. It should be possible to implement this in one or two days.
- Optionally there could be a ‘request’ button next to the pay button on the Bunq homepage and on the Bunq.me homepage. Let the visitor fill in their iban and the name of the Bunq user and you can send the payment request.